SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

megatron is used to transform files from BinHex, MacBinary, AppleSin-
gle, or netatalk style AppleDouble formats into MacBinary or netatalk
style AppleDouble formats. The netatalk style AppleDouble format is the
file format used by afpd, the netatalk Apple Filing Protocol (Apple-
Share) server. BinHex, MacBinary, and AppleSingle are commonly used
formats for transferring Macintosh files between machines via email or
file transfer protocols. megatron uses its name to determine what type
of tranformation is being asked of it.
If megatron is called as unhex , unbin or unsingle, it tries to convert
file(s) from BinHex, MacBinary, or AppleSingle into AppleDouble format.
BinHex is the format most often used to send Macintosh files by e-mail.
Usually these files have an extension of ".hqx". MacBinary is the for-
mat most often used by terminal emulators "on the fly" when transfer-
ring Macintosh files in binary mode. MacBinary files often have an
extension of ".bin". Some Macintosh LAN-based email packages use uuen-
coded AppleSingle format to "attach" or "enclose" files in email.
AppleSingle files don’t have a standard filename extension.
If megatron is called as hqx2bin, single2bin, or macbinary, it will try
to convert the file(s) from BinHex, AppleSingle, or AppleDouble into
MacBinary. This last translation may be useful in moving Macintosh
files from your afpd server to some other machine when you can’t copy
them from the server using a Macintosh for some reason.
If megatron is called with any other name, it uses the default transla-
tion, namely unhex.
If no source file is given, or if sourcefile is ‘-’, and if the conver-
sion is from a BinHex or MacBinary file, megatron will read from stan-
dard input.
The filename used to store any output file is the filename that is
encoded in the source file. MacBinary files are created with a ".bin"
extension. In the case of conflicts, the old file is overwritten!